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Gold Contributor

My employee is off working. I've got things rolling along and I need something to do. Is anyone building up their business that wants some marketing/sales help? Anyone need some ideas? Anyone need some resources?

Let me know. No charge. Just looking to help if you're looking for it but don't want to put up a post about it. I've got nothing to do for most of the day for a couple of weeks and I'd like to do something productive to keep my mind going so I don't pick up any wasteful habits with my free time.

New Contributor

My employee is off working. I've got things rolling along and I need something to do. Is anyone building up their business that wants some marketing/sales help? Anyone need some ideas? Anyone need some resources?

Let me know. No charge. Just looking to help if you're looking for it but don't want to put up a post about it. I've got nothing to do for most of the day for a couple of weeks and I'd like to do something productive to keep my mind going so I don't pick up any wasteful habits with my free time.

Let’s start with the monetization side. You do the coaching yourself? How does it work? Explain the sales pitch to me. Then we can move into the attention side of the business and how you get people into your “funnel”.

These people aren't going online so how the hell are they going to find your site?

They are dinosaurs. They will get old, die, and when people with an understanding of technology take over the agricultural industry in your area, they'll all use indeed to hire people and your service won't be needed.

Selling coaching in stacks of 1, 3, 6 or 9 hours (hours are scheduled one by one, most often after one coaching session is done we book the next one).
Also sellings ebooks (they don't really sell though).
Got multiple newsletters going on, about 2000 people.

Running a 23K members female entrepreneur group on FB, selling ads on the group (weekly) at ~$150/week.

I feel like we could sell WAY MORE (currently expecting ~$30K for 2019), we're charging ~100 USD/hr for consulting.

We're providing value non-stop. Participating in the group a lot too, but we're trying not to spam the group (considering we do not allow others to advertise their business either, unless they bought an ad).

Any tips on scaling ? Girlfriend (owner) is not keen on hiring/contracting yet as she feels the business is not big enough. I believe she could scale faster if someone else would take care of some things by following a SOP.

Bronze Contributor

Alright, given that you're bored, let's throw some ideas around. I jot down a bunch of business ideas all the time, but rather than to hoard them deep in my notes somewhere they may never see the light of day, I'd much rather share them with others. If anything, we can poke holes at where it couldn't work and shoot it down. If it has real merits, somebody out there can potentially benefit from this. Which is still better than these ideas dying alone in the notebooks.

Here's one I've been thinking about, but I can't fully get the story to hold. Let's chat about it and see if it has any legs.

In a nutshell, this is an App that would connect workout buddies. There's an idea like this out there called Gymder, but this model differs from it. It's about connecting people that workout frequently with beginners at prices cheaper than typical personal training. Let's call the fit person the "Bro", and the beginner, let's call him the "Noob". The Bro works out every day/other day anyway. He could buddy-up with a Noob doing his normal workouts, for a small extra cost the Noob brings to the table. Noob pays for a Bro friend at the gym and learns from his workouts, and the Bro gets a nice bone thrown his way without having to change his current plans, he works out every day anyway. Noob jumps in on machine doing the same exercises while Bro is resting, and they rotate as 1-1 gym buddies. Ok, I think this explains the idea.

Now for the revenue model: ideally, your platform would also serve to schedule the Noob and the Bros time together, which would provide a degree of control and management of the services rendered. In this position, you could command a percentage of all hours/bro sessions booked. This is impractical, because what's to hold the Bro and the Noob from making their own arrangements after they link up once? Unless the percentage is low enough that the added convenience of scheduling through this app is worth the whatever percentage you're asking.

Another way to possible extract value would be to charge a service fee for each connection. This service fee would be paid from the Bro's first session with the Noob. This is the convenience or finder's fee for connecting the Noob and the Bro. whatever arrangement they make beyond that is theirs.

How/what else could be done here? Just having fun with this idea - but I really like the sound of connecting these two groups. The fit dude is super passionate, and can genuinely help a noob for cheap, and there's endless Bros and Noobs out there.

Selling coaching in stacks of 1, 3, 6 or 9 hours (hours are scheduled one by one, most often after one coaching session is done we book the next one).
Also sellings ebooks (they don't really sell though).
Got multiple newsletters going on, about 2000 people.

Running a 23K members female entrepreneur group on FB, selling ads on the group (weekly) at ~$150/week.

I feel like we could sell WAY MORE (currently expecting ~$30K for 2019), we're charging ~100 USD/hr for consulting.

We're providing value non-stop. Participating in the group a lot too, but we're trying not to spam the group (considering we do not allow others to advertise their business either, unless they bought an ad).

Any tips on scaling ? Girlfriend (owner) is not keen on hiring/contracting yet as she feels the business is not big enough. I believe she could scale faster if someone else would take care of some things by following a SOP.

New Contributor

These people aren't going online so how the hell are they going to find your site?

They are dinosaurs. They will get old, die, and when people with an understanding of technology take over the agricultural industry in your area, they'll all use indeed to hire people and your service won't be needed.

Gold Contributor

Alright, given that you're bored, let's throw some ideas around. I jot down a bunch of business ideas all the time, but rather than to hoard them deep in my notes somewhere they may never see the light of day, I'd much rather share them with others. If anything, we can poke holes at where it couldn't work and shoot it down. If it has real merits, somebody out there can potentially benefit from this. Which is still better than these ideas dying alone in the notebooks.

Here's one I've been thinking about, but I can't fully get the story to hold. Let's chat about it and see if it has any legs.

In a nutshell, this is an App that would connect workout buddies. There's an idea like this out there called Gymder, but this model differs from it. It's about connecting people that workout frequently with beginners at prices cheaper than typical personal training. Let's call the fit person the "Bro", and the beginner, let's call him the "Noob". The Bro works out every day/other day anyway. He could buddy-up with a Noob doing his normal workouts, for a small extra cost the Noob brings to the table. Noob pays for a Bro friend at the gym and learns from his workouts, and the Bro gets a nice bone thrown his way without having to change his current plans, he works out every day anyway. Noob jumps in on machine doing the same exercises while Bro is resting, and they rotate as 1-1 gym buddies. Ok, I think this explains the idea.

Now for the revenue model: ideally, your platform would also serve to schedule the Noob and the Bros time together, which would provide a degree of control and management of the services rendered. In this position, you could command a percentage of all hours/bro sessions booked. This is impractical, because what's to hold the Bro and the Noob from making their own arrangements after they link up once? Unless the percentage is low enough that the added convenience of scheduling through this app is worth the whatever percentage you're asking.

Another way to possible extract value would be to charge a service fee for each connection. This service fee would be paid from the Bro's first session with the Noob. This is the convenience or finder's fee for connecting the Noob and the Bro. whatever arrangement they make beyond that is theirs.

How/what else could be done here? Just having fun with this idea - but I really like the sound of connecting these two groups. The fit dude is super passionate, and can genuinely help a noob for cheap, and there's endless Bros and Noobs out there.

advertise as a personal training service, create some made up personal training qualification and give it to people who sign up with your company as the trainers, have a subscription service that they pay via credit card to you for and take a fee off the top, but make any refunds come out of the trainer's income since it's their responsibility to keep customers happy.

why make it cheap? make it profitable as hell. I love the idea.

Make it and be the "personal trainer" yourself to try it out. Make a website with a solid one-page layout, advertise on craigslist making it look like a personal training platform to find great trainers in their area, hook them up with the best personal trainer out there (you, lol) and then get busy seeing it yourself where potential problems might come up. Then, get the app made. Hire on a wannabe personal trainer and give them your "certification" and get them clients. Make it a low effort thing that any gym bro can sign up for. "Dude, did you hear you can get paid to go to the gym and help people that suck at lifting?" "Holy shit bro, that sounds sick! What's the app called??" And that's how you grow it.

Then, your trainers sign contracts when they sign up (terms and conditions), and your customers pay for subscriptions so the money goes straight to you and then to the trainers (bros).

You'll need an app, two websites (one for your app and another for the "certification" that your trainers have) and that's all. Start with being the trainer yourself and this could be a mini uber-type business that brings in a few million.

Contributor

Sep 8, 2014

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Hi JohnnyBoy,

I'm in the infancy stages as the single salesperson for my B2B company that provides value to businesses by way of savings them on recurring expenses by way of utilizing our product ,think along the lines of saving on monthly phone or internet . Forgive the purposeful vagueness, hopefully you are still able to lend some advice and thoughts

Gold Contributor

I'm in the infancy stages as the single salesperson for my B2B company that provides value to businesses by way of savings them on recurring expenses by way of utilizing our product ,think along the lines of saving on monthly phone or internet . Forgive the purposeful vagueness, hopefully you are still able to lend some advice and thoughts

Workaholics aren't heroes

I'm about to do some old fashioned direct marketing, but wants to keep track of the sales data. How do i go about that the easiest way?

I'm in the steam cleaning car wash industry - in many ways similar to your lawn care company. What kind of valuable content can i produce - in this aspect my biggest inspiration is saltybae who makes it sexy to be a butcher. Look him up ;-)

Thanks.

“What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.”
― Jason Fried

Contributor

Go ask small local businesses in your neighbourhood to help for free marketing. Say "I will make all the computer work, I will show you everything you need in the future- here is the cost of printing, I just need to build more experience". You will be surprised. Everybody needs marketing, but most of all: people who don't know how to use a computer. For example: your local bakery, car mechanic, local grocery store.... These people NEED marketing help for cheap. These are people who can NOT use Microsoft Paint.

Gold Contributor

Your company is location dependent which means your primary focus should be getting attention locally. Your company needs to become locally famous.

I’ve posted about how local business can advertise for free by hosting a party and getting other businesses to pay for it.

Go to the local venue that can hold 200-500 people and get a quote for an event.

Go to local businesses and tell them you’ll get them 200 people to meet with and advertise to for an evening, getting them local exposure. Get them to pay you $100-$200 or so. Get enough businesses to cover the cost.

Go to every church, school, etc. and advertise a free community celebration with food and music.

Pay for the event with the money from local businesses. Advertise your own business for free and be locally known as the party guy who has a steam cleaning car wash business.

Then, host a podcast and invite local influencers on your show to talk about all things in your area, chop up the content into short videos and have them post it on their Instagram pages and you’ll post the content on yours. You’ll get them more attention as well as siphon off a bit of their local audience members and you’ll get free advertising that way.

Make sure you’ve got a “google my business” listing on the maps section.

Make sure you’re on craigslist.

I would get a phone list and send ringless voicemails to all of the phone number in my town and it costs like 6 cents a message. Totally worth it.

Contributor

Haha, I realize the difficulty in asking for suggestions without being willing to completely divulge the exact nature of the business. Let me try to be more creative..my business sells a one time product that allows the user to realize recurring savings, kinda like the old scramblers cable boxes from the 90's only completely legal

New Contributor

FASTLANE INSIDER

Apr 26, 2019

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Hey,
Jhonny as a starter I’d like to raise money to start my journey and I was wondering how would you do that knowing that you literally have nothing, what advice can you give me , I already had answer about it but it’s good to have different answers

While I agree, this is probably a country that does not use Craigslist or Indeed. Why does it not use Craigslist or Indeed? Because in the posters own thread, he/she says it is a country where technology is behind. This is a PERFECT example of why this site should make the profile AT LEAST tell the country a poster is in. If they don't choose to put their country, they can be a lurker until they choose to tell us what country they are in. Not just this poster but LOTS of posters.

New Contributor

While I agree, this is probably a country that does not use Craigslist or Indeed. Why does it not use Craigslist or Indeed? Because in the posters own thread, he/she says it is a country where technology is behind. This is a PERFECT example of why this site should make the profile AT LEAST tell the country a poster is in. If they don't choose to put their country, they can be a lurker until they choose to tell us what country they are in. Not just this poster but LOTS of posters.

Sorry but I don't understand what do you mean. I only asked for an hand, I don't have an ulterior motive. From my point of view, the fact that people in the city where I born are not in step with technology, is a point in favor to my idea, is a lack that I could fill. But this doesn't mean that these people doesn't know Internet or what a PC is, but they don't know website such Indeed yet.

Gold Contributor

Sorry but I don't understand what do you mean. I only asked for an hand, I don't have an ulterior motive. From my point of view, the fact that people in the city where I born are not in step with technology, is a point in favor to my idea, is a lack that I could fill. But this doesn't mean that these people doesn't know Internet or what a PC is, but they don't know website such Indeed yet.